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Should all girls in schools be given free sanitary products?

Friday, 9 March 2018

In case you haven't seen it in the news, or don't live in
Wales, you might not know the news but it's a big debate at the moment. In a
bid to tackle period poverty Rhondda Cynon Taf council have voted to
provide sanitary products for free to all schools, which could start in
September if they get the votes of a full council. This has been a
controversial decision, however, as more councils in Wales look to whether
this is something they want to persue, mainly because it's estimated to cost
the council £70,000 a year, which does seem quite steep. You can read more
about the scheme specifically here.

Now as I've been talking a lot about sanitary products
recently, and will be doing more in future, I decided to get involved in the debate about this and was actually on
BBC Radio Wales on Tuesday saying my little piece and getting involved in the
debate. It's safe to say I was a lot more nervous than I expected to be and I don't
quite think I got my points across properly so here is this post, to talk about
a lot of the points that were made and give my own take on the whole thing.

But why is it such a big issue? Well that's because of
period poverty, there are parts of Wales which have pretty high levels of poverty -RCT has 72% of residents live in the most deprived half of Wales. And this means that a lot of young
girls can't afford to buy sanitary products, which has an adverse effect
on their schooling and further affects their well being and happiness.

Now to me it seems like a pretty basic idea to provide
sanitary products for free in toilets in schools, I mean there's toilet
paper and soap so why not sanitary products? Not only for those who cannot
afford them -for whom it would be invaluable- but for girls caught short, or
having their first period.

But there is a £70,000 price tag, and that's just for the
pilot scheme.

The price was the main reason that most people seemed to be
adverse to the scheme, it seemed like a lot of money for one council to be
spending on products that a lot of people felt people "should be able to
buy themselves".

One woman on the show made a big impact of opinions and made
a few odd, and in my opinion irrelevant, points but her main one was that she
simply didn't believe that people just couldn't "stand on their own two
feet" and buy their own sanitary products, and didn't seem to agree
with free school meals for kids from poorer backgrounds either. Talking about
the fact that we've lived through two world wars and now people want everything
handed to them. But I'm sure during the war there were many people who couldn't
afford sanitary products and used different things, rags, socks, you name it,
it was probably used. Do we really want people to have to go back to times like
that?

A lot of people were also of the opinion that these girls
just need to budget better, that they probably have an iphone and lots of make
up and really need to get their priorities straight. And while I'm sure there
are plenty of people generally (hello all my fellow students) that need to
learn to budget better there are also people out there who are living with absolutely no
money to spare, some people who do genuinely have to chose between buying food and
buying sanitary products (which aren't cheap being taxed as a luxury). And
on the other side of the debate many people came back saying that the situation
was actually that bad, that they'd lived through not even asking
their parents for a pound to go buy tampons because there simply wasn't a pound
there to give, and that's when they were only £1.

People like The Red Box Project also had their say, they're
a charity who donate free "First period" kits to schools so that they
can be given to girls who need them, and continue to give girls products month after month if needs be. They work directly with schools and with
young girls and see the problem first hand with girls missing school because
they simply don't have access to sanitary products, and are trying to use
products they can source elsewhere. This is a great charity -which you can
donate to here- but realistically they're not going to be able to reach all the
girls in the Wales who need these products, so I personally think that a
government scheme would be a lot better at helping girls facing period poverty.
In Wales in 2018 periods shouldn't be a barrier stopping girls from
getting an education, nothing should.

In the long run, £70,000 for just one council per year does
sound like a lot of money., but if it works then I think it's worth it. I
personally think that better alternatives to expensive one use sanitary
products is needed. Maybe giving girls who need them free menstrual cups,
reusable pads, or period underwear (like I talked about last week). Products
that have a much longer lifetime and therefore would be cheaper for councils
longer term. Whether these are provided in schools or given to family planning
clinics, which are already invaluable tools for access to free contraception
and education and could also become valuable tools to access sanitary
products and education too! But that's just by two cents.

So I didn't come off to well on the radio (oh well it was a
start) but hopefully came off better here. Do you agree with the scheme? Think it could be done better? Don't think it should be done at all?

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